German novelist whose most important works are his two autobiographical novels, Andreas Hartknopf (1786) and Anton Reiser, 4 vol. (1785–90). The latter is, with J.W. von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister, the most mature 18th-century German novel of contemporary life.

Moritz' family was very poor, and he was apprenticed to a hatter, but patrons helped him to study theology. His restless and unhappy nature led him to abandon theology in an attempt to become an actor. This attempt failed, however, and, after completing his studies, he taught in Dessau and Potsdam and finally in a Gymnasium in Berlin, where he was briefly editor of the Vossische Zeitung (with which Gotthold Ephraim Lessing had been associated). In 1786 he traveled to Italy, where he met Goethe, whom he later advised on artistic theory. After his return to Berlin in 1789 he became professor of aesthetics and archaeology at the Academy of Arts.